Blog & Record of Events

     In February of 2020, the Temenos Young Scholars met in London for another day full of academic presentations from eclectic disciplines and fields of scholarship.

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The keynote lectures were:

Dr. Joseph Milne; Citizenship and the Cosmic Sense

Eddie Barnett; Folk Memory and The Diggers

The Young Scholar Presentations of The Day (and recordings):

 

Aristel Škrbic; Tradition: Between Preservation and Change

Kamil Sawicki; Difficulty in Reading a Keats Sonnet in the 21st Century

       Hina Khalid; Intercultural Boundaries in the Classical Punjabi Love Story Hir-Ranjha       

Andrew Brookman; Know Thyself: Tradition and Self-Knowledge in Emmanuel Carrere’s The Kingdom

          Adele Guyton; Re-reading the Mabinogion in The Assembly of the Severed Head          

Tom Dupre; Rotting Fruit: T.S Eliot and the 1890s

(As with all posts on this page, talks are listed in order of the day’s timetable)

Known to many of the Young Scholars, Dr Joseph Milne is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. He initiated The Temenos Young Scholars ten years ago. Since the founding of the Academy he has been giving seminars on Shakespeare throughout each term. He also teaches the Christian Mysticism module on the Temenos Foundation Course in the Perennial Philosophy.

Aside from his Temenos engagements, he is editor of Land&Liberty, the magazine of the Henry George Foundation.

Until his retirement in 2013 he was lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Kent, specialising in mysticism and the art of reading primary texts.

Over the last twelve years Dr. Milne has been studying Natural Law as conceived in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Medieval Christianity. He has just been commissioned by a publisher to write a book on Natural Law.

Dr. Milne’s talk, entitled Citizenship and the Cosmic Sense, is available here as a recording:

Eddie Barnett worked for seven years as an A-Level Philosophy teacher before leaving teaching to spend more time on education. He now runs a tuition agency and is currently researching the nature of memory in connection with land use.

His talk is available here as a recording, Folk Memory and The Diggers. Images below go with the talk:

 

As well as his talk, Eddie’s blog page addresses these matters of land use, linked here. He can be contacted through his blog page (twitter account therein), or his email can be provided upon request from the administrator of this website.

 

February 2019

The Temenos Young Scholars met at The Kilns in Oxfordshire for another day of exploration, meeting students and academics of the Humanities, and attending seminar presentations.

Temenos’ own Grevel Lindop, who is a poet, writer and former Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies at Manchester university gave a seminar entitled ‘Charles Williams, The Third Inkling’. 

In the early afternoon, the mid-twentieth-century charms of the C.S Lewis House were explored during the tour of a building which had cradled many literary endeavors and friendships. This was followed by a walk of the nearby common. Having been the home to a small Christian community of scholars and writers, the place and its current inhabitants seemed to glow with a kinship and warmth, intimating one of the principles of The Temenos Academy, of understanding tradition as continual renewal. 

Later in the day, a speech was given on Memories of Hugo Dyson and Owen Barfield, written by Julia Cleave and Owen A. Barfield. Ms. Cleave is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy who studied with Hugo Dyson at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. Mr. Barfield is the grandson of the Inkling of the same name and his literary executor.

Jakub Betinsky (Durham University) gave a Young Scholars’ Talk inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, presenting on:

Right Imagination in ‘On Fairy Stories’

To echo Francis Warner’s statement from A Blessing on C.S Lewis’s Home in Oxford, The Kilns:

‘So, may the warm hospitality and environment of The Kilns bring the blessing of such union and fellowship … It is a living inspiration’

The full article is attached below.

FRANCIS WARNER Blessing on the Kilns

October 2018

Our fifth YSD was held at the Essex Unitarian Church in London. Temenos’ own Hilary Davies spoke on poetry and translation, and Jenny Rallens presented on language and memory.

The afternoon seminar sessions involved the attentive reading of poetry: Shakespeare’s sonnets with Dr Joseph Milne; poems by Dylan Thomas, W.S Graham, and Thomas Traherne with Hilary Davies.

Additionally, Young Scholars from various disciplines presented creative and academic work related to the day’s theme:

Making the Res Publica One Word at a Time – Aristel Škrbić

“What is reading someone’s work, after all, but gradually acquiring the writer’s memory?” Writing and the Acquisition of Memory – Andrew Brookman

Horace’s Ode III.30 ‘exegi monumentum’ and Latin Metre – Maria Overy

How Music Was Made Vacuity: Exploring Rhyme in T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations – Adele Guyton

Nature’s Vocabulary of Symbols in Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ – Kamil Sawicki

Maria presents a series of reflections on Friendship and Charity as they are brought to us by the European Classical Christian Tradition. Platonic and Aristotelian views which show how Friendship is the seat of personal and public life are explored. This topic, which seems so apparent and natural to us, is shown to have many rich, even elusive, qualities!

Young Scholar’s Day 2017

Kamil shows how professional and emanating Folly act in generative ways throughout Shakespeare’s King Lear, and makes recourse to Renaissance scholarship. The talk is available as a recording and in essay form:

 

 

 

Folly in Making a Good Society

Young Scholar’s Day 2017

Aristel explores contemporary meanings of Sovereignty in Political and Academic spheres in light of the UK’s membership of the EU. The re-emerging of the word ‘sovereign’ into debates, especially in the UK but also around the world, is considered and related to the bigger picture of Community and the Political Whole.

Young Scholar’s Day 2017

Young Scholar’s Day 2017

On the Summer of 2017 we came together as a group of young philosophers, artists, musicians and poets for a day of learning and discussion. The day was themed Making A Good Society and was explored from angles of Ancient Philosophy, poets and playwrights,  contemporary debates of Political Philosophy and Traditional Art.

Talks were given by Valentin Gerlier and Dr Joseph Milne who teach regularly at the Temenos Academy and are both members of its Academic Board. Recordings of their talks are posted here.

Valentin Gerlier: the Good Society and the Poets

Dr Joseph Milne: The Cosmos, Earth and City

 

The Day was organized by Young Scholars Sebastian Arnold, a student at Kings College London; Aristel Skrbic, a student at KU Leuven; and Kamil Sawicki. It was held at St James Senior Boy’s School in Ashford, Surrey, a school which offers a distinctive philosophical education and a venue generously made available.